Curiouser (Awww Monday), Inspiring Quote of the Week, and FutureCast (Poetry Monday)

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Awww Monday is hosted by Sandee at Comedy Plus.

Join us every Monday for Awww...Mondays.  Post a picture that makes you say Awww... and that's it.

Make sure you get the code from Sandee's site, linked above, and leave a link to your post so we can visit you.  What better way to start the week than with a smile!

These kitties are brothers and opposites.  When you open the cage, one goes to the back, the other tries to climb on you.

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 Sparks, the brainchild of Annie of McGuffy's Reader, is on hiatus, so here's an Inspiring Quote of the Week in her honor.     

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Poetry Monday was started by Diane at On The Alberta/Montana Border.  Jenny at Procrastinating Donkey is on a blog semi-break and her poetry is sorely missed, we hope she comes back soon.   Charlotte/Mother Owl participates, and now Karen at Baking in a Tornado is jumping in at least once a month, too.  Anyone else is welcome to join in the fun, just let Diane know!

This week the theme is Predictions.                         

Our parish fair each year has

The usual fun in the 'burbs,

Food and rides and carnival games

Even a fortune teller using herbs.

It really was quite unusual,

What she predicted was mighty swell.

Will all she said really come true?

Only thyme will tell.

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Some IT guy who's very bright

Came up with a way

When you are typing on a machine

To predict what you will say.

But predictive text is a challenge

It comes up with comments funky,

The gent who invented it just died

His Fun Fair is next Monkey.

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When my Sweetie gives me a present

It sure gives me a lift,

But i always know what's in it.

That knowing is really a gift.

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No, i won't make predictions,

Won't yield to that temptation

My life will continue to be

A non-prophet operation!

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Today is:

Anniversary of His Majesty the King -- Bhutan

Anthesteria -- Ancient Greek Calendar (three day Festival of Flowers, feast of the dead, and drinking festival; date approximate)

Card Reading Day -- because greeting cards can be fun to just stop and read, can't they?

Day in Honor of Dr. W. H. Lini, Father of Independence -- Vanuatu

Fairtrade Fortnight begins -- UK (a chance to get involved in making sure farmers in developing countries have fair wages and good working conditions)   

Family Day -- AB, BC, NB, ON, SK, Canada

Feast of the Feralia -- Ancient Roman Calendar (final day of the Parentalia, with picnics in the graveyard that included libations to the departed)

Heritage Day -- NS, Canada (honouring Mona Louise Parsons)

International Mother Language Day -- UNESCO     http://www.un.org/en/events/motherlanguageday/

Islander Holiday -- PEI, Canada

Louis Riel Day -- MB, Canada

National Sticky Bun Day

Presidents' Day -- US and Territories

Remember the Funniest Thing Your Kid Ever Did Day -- in honor of Erma Bombeck's birth anniversary

Sandino Day -- Nicaragua (assassination anniversary of Augusto César Sandino)

Shaheed Dibosh -- Bangladesh (International Mother Language Day/Language Martyr's Day, for those who died in the Bengali Language Movement in 1952)

St. Peter Damian's Day (Doctor of the Church)

Anniversaries Today:

Dudley Moore marries Brogan Lane, 1988

Liz Taylor marries Michael Wilding, 1952

The Washington Monument is dedicated, 1885

Birthdays Today:

Corbin Bleu, 1989

Ashley Greene, 1987

Ellen Page, 1987

Charlotte Church, 1986

Jennifer Love Hewitt, 1979

William Baldwin, 1963

Christopher Atkins, 1961

Alan Trammell, 1958

Jack Coleman, 1958

Mary Chapin Carpenter, 1958

Kelsey Grammer, 1955

Christine Ebersole, 1953

William Petersen, 1953

Olympia J. Snowe, 1947

Tyne Daly, 1946

Alan Rickman, 1946

David Geffen, 1943

John Lewis, 1940

Gary Lockwood, 1937

Barbara Jordan, 1936

Rue McClanahan, 1935

Nina Simone, 1933

Roberto Gomez Bolanos, 1929

Erma Bombeck, 1927

Hubert de Givenchy, 1927

Sam Peckinpah, 1925

Ann Sheridan, 1915

W.H. Auden, 1907

Anais Nin, 1903

Andres Segovia, 1893

Alice Freeman Palmer, 1855

Charles Scribner, 1821

John Henry Cardinal Newman, 1801

Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, 1794

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Die Physiker"(Play), 1962

"A Woman to Remember"(TV; first soap opera), 1949

"War as it Happens"(TV), 1944

"Green Pastures"(Play), 1930

"The New Yorker"(Magazine), 1925

"The Communist Manifesto"(Publication date), 1848

"Cherokee Phoenix"(Newspaper, first US Native American paper), 1828

Today in History:

England begins the trial against Joan of Arc, 1431

John Wilkes is thrown out of the English House of Commons for his pornographic poem "An Essay on Woman," a satire of Pope's "An Essay on Man," 1764

Freedom of worship is established in France under its Constitution, 1795

The first locomotive, Richard Trevithick's, runs for the first time, in Wales, 1804

The first Native American Indian newspaper, the "Cherokee Phoenix", begins publication, 1828

The first known sewing machine in the US is patented by John Greenough of Washington, D.C., 1842

Sarah G Bagley of Lowell, Massachusetts becomes the first US woman telegrapher, 1846

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish the Communist Manifesto, 1848

The US Congress outlaws foreign currency as legal tender in the US, 1857

Edwin T. Holmes installs the first electric burglar alarm, in Boston, Massachusetts, 1858

The first Roman Catholic parish church for blacks in the US is dedicated, in Baltimore, Maryland, 1864

Lucy B. Hobbs becomes the first US woman to earn a DDS degree, 1866

Benjamin Disraeli replaces William Gladstone as English premier, 1874

The first telephone book is issued, to 50 subscribers in New Harbor, Connecticut, 1878

Oregon becomes the first US state to declare Labor Day a holiday, 1887

The North Carolina legislature adjourns for the day to mark the death of Frederick Douglass, 1895

Dr. Harvey Cushing, the first US neurosurgeon, performs his first operation, 1902

Gustav Mahler conducts his last concerto, 1911

The Battle of Verdun (WWI) begins, will last until Dec. 18; over a quarter of a million casualties, half a million injuries, 1916

The last Carolina parakeet, Incas, dies in the Cincinati Zoo, in the same cage that had held Martha, the last passenger pigeon, 4 years earlier, 1918

The Constituent Assembly of the Democratic Republic of Georgia adopts the country's first constitution, 1921

Great Britain grants Egypt independence, 1922

The first issue of "New Yorker" magazine is published, 1925

The first instant developing camera is demonstrated in NYC, by E H Land, 1947

The British government, under Winston Churchill, abolishes identity cards in the UK to "set the people free", 1952

Watson and Crick discover the structure of the DNA molecule; according to legend, they walk into the Eagle Pub in Cambridge and Crick announces, "We have found the secret of Life," 1953

The Peace symbol is designed and completed by Gerald Holtom, commissioned by Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 1958

Malcolm X is assassinated, 1965

The Convention on Psychotropic Substances is signed at Vienna, 1971

The Soviet unmanned spaceship Luna 20 lands on the Moon, 1972

Former United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are sentenced to prison, 1975

Steve Fossett lands in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada becoming the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon, 1995

Euro zone finance ministers agree on a second bailout for Greece, 2012

Scientists discover that bumblebees have the ability to sense electric fields around flowers, enabling them to identify specific flowers for pollination, 2013

Turkey sends troops to Syria to rescue 40 guards and relocate remains from the tomb of Sulayman Shah, which is now surrounded by ISIS militants; the site is internationally recognized as Turkish territory, 2015

The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa-2 touches down on asteroid Ryugu on a mission to collect rock samples, 2019

Israel launches the Beresheet Lunar Lander with a Lunar Library, a 30 million page digital library, with the aim of storing a back-up of much of humanity's learning (a "civilization backup") on the Moon, 2019

Englishwoman Jasmine Harrison, age 21, becomes the youngest woman to row across an ocean arriving in Antigua as part of the Atlantic Challenge after 70 days, 3 hours, 48 minutes, 2021